News : Insider

INU - The Iranian Regime is facing a major threat from anti-regime protesters and could fall by the end of 2018, according to one Iranian dissident and defence expert.

B. Taghvaee told the Daily Star Online that the Iranian Regime is facing three key uprisings this year, from anti-regime groups, women's rights groups, and religious minority groups, which threaten to bring the Regime down sooner rather than later.

Taghvaee, an aviation and military expert, said that the Regime was on its way down.

He said: "The Iranian regime is dying, it's a matter of when not if. It might be next year, it might be in the next five years. But they are dying."

The expert, who lives in Malta and cannot return to Iran for fear of arrest or worse, explained that it is the very ideology of the Iranian Regime that spells its downfall.

He said: "Iran is based on an ideology of exporting Shia Islam, and expanding the "Axis of Resistance" to Israel. In order to show that Iran is a model Islamic country, they have enforced Sharia law and made women wear the hijab. And in order to win this battle to show themselves as the ideal Islamic society, they have spent billions of Iran's natural resources and bankrupted the country."

The Iranian Regime has been trying to compete with Saudi Arabia for decades, which has ruined the Iranian economy. These economic problems brought protesters into the streets in the first place and have kept them coming back day after day.

He said that female protesters in Iran have done more than any other group to bring together opposition groups for these ongoing protests.

He said: "To tell you the truth women have more courage than the men in Iran. Every Wednesday for the past few months, women have been taking part in the White Wednesday campaign, where they remove their hijab in protest at the laws on compulsory Islamic dress. Almost 20 million Iranian women have been arrested at some point in their life for wearing the hijab wrong.”

He continued: "And the reason that the regime can't let women wear what they want is that this regime is based on a strict interpretation of Islam. If they lose this battle, that day will be the day that the regime falls."

Furthermore he warned that the Regime may lash out militarily in an effort to distract from its domestic problems, by starting a proxy war with Israel since Iran has been already caught smuggling weapons into Syria and an Iranian general threatened to "open the gates of hell" on Israel after downing an Israeli F16 fighter jet.

This should, however, be seen as weakness by the Regime, not strength.